The Saturday poem

Of all those starting outHigh-horsed and spirited,Instepped in their stirrups,

Who will stay young in the end?Who'll be the merrymen old,Weird sisters, the mockers of mockers?

Be poet enough to surviveThose delusions the king of the worldPresented once to Buddha?

"After the first of desireAnd the second, terror of death,That of social obligation."

A new poem by Seamus Heaney from Dàin Do Shomhairle: Poems for Sorley, a pamphlet published by the Sorley MacLean Trust in association with the Scottish Poetry Library to mark the centenary of Sorley MacLean's birth.